i’m vega. don’t interact if you are under the age of 18. they/fae/it/she/he, 25 years old. aroace agender. icon by @tobyytime. i disappear and reappear in sporadic bursts. i love looking at utdr stuff but constantly being here is bad for my mental health. if and when i disappear i will be back. i am never gone, regardless of how badly you want me gone. dni: minors; you don’t support a FREE PALESTINE or you think GENOCIDE against the Palestinians is justified in any way.
16 - The Lightning by @how2spell-sandwhich and @shinekittenace
(If you're new to this blog, the other MTT AU tarot cards can be found here: https://nib-mettaton.tumblr.com/MTT-Tarot).
Happy New Year! I spent a bit of extra time painting these cards. You might also notice the scan quality on these is better than what I had before. I got a new printer/scanner unit that is way better than the old one (I may need to rescan a lot of the older cards!).
Compared to the other cards in the past, I think this upload requires a bit more background info, because the inspiration here comes from more historical Tarot decks with less common imagery and their interpretation is more speculative than definitive. So if you feel like delving a wee bit into Tarot history...
Some Extra Info and Explanations Below the Cut:
The pattern of the Rider-Waite Smith (RWS) Tarot deck is considered the "modern standard", and a lot of modern Tarot decks follow the same pattern as RWS. But older Tarot decks were more influenced by culture and [religio]political events at the time, and thus historical decks often had different patterns with different themes and imagery.
The Captain and Bacchus as a substitute for The Priestess and the Hierophant.
In the earlier days, The Priestess (2) and The Hierophant (5) were The Popess and The Pope; religiopolitical events made Catholic imagery less favorable and so, for a time, deck makers replaced The Popess and The Pope with something else.
While some deck makers chose the analogous Juno and Jupiter (pulled from classical Roman mythology), The Captain and Bacchus appear as their substitutes in Belgian Tarot. No one exactly knows why the Belgian Tarot pattern use these substitutes, but some people theorize it was to mock religious authority, such that their interpretation may possibly be drastically different.
The Captain is a stock character pulled from theatre (Commedia dell'Arte); he isn't really a captain, he's vaingloriously exaggerating or lying about his accomplishments, but he may have dreams and/or noble intentions. For me, I've assumed the interpretation to be fake-it-till-you-make-it and the reversal of this card to be a situation where the nobleness of intentions get lost. In my card design, MTE198x EX is sitting in a literal trash heap, but for all intents and purposes, he is king of that trash heap and proud of his #1 Best Friend trophy given by Alphys and the Human, while the wreath crown is up in the sky (his dreams and intentions, and a sly nudge of the symbol of the bad ending for that AU).
Bacchus is the god of wine, it's hard not to imagine "party animal" vibes, and for me, I assume the interpretation to be a reminder to work hard but party harder, the reversal being what happens when you party too hard. I couldn't help but also give MTE198x NEO more "Terminator" vibes here as a result - cool to have a friend, not as an enemy.
I prefer reading with these cards added to the original 78, but if using as a replacement for 2 and 5, it could potentially remove any spiritual influence of readings in favor of more hedonistic ones.
Eros as a substitute for The Lovers
This happens to be more straightforward. Many of the very early Tarot decks didn't call this card "The Lovers", but "Love" or "God of Love", with some cards focused on the figure bringing couples together or just an image of Cupid entirely (such as in some Minchiate Tarot decks designs).
So, obviously, it makes sense here to feature a singular Mettaton here that's a literal Cupid.
The Ship as a substitute for The Devil
The Ship appears in place of the Devil in the Sicilian Tarot deck. It's not sure why this substitution was made, but one theory suggest that, since it is a Sicilian deck, the ship might possibly be an invading warship and was seen just as scary for an island kingdom.
Traditional interpretations for The Devil are usually something like bondage to compulsions and desires. My thought is to take The Ship as bondage to something important (as in duty-bound).
Hence me picking Coreton for this card, bound to the power of the Core, incredibly terrifying to go up against.
The Lightning as a substitute for The Tower
The Tower of the RWS deck is based on towers from other historical Tarot decks, where lightning is destroying a tower - this image usually associated with the Bible story of God striking the Tower of Babel.
But some other historical Tarot decks (such as the Belgian Tarot mentioned earlier), use an imagery of lightning hitting a tree and shocking the poor fellow under it - this image was usually associated with the Bible story of the disaster faced by Job at the hands of God. The lightning-hitting-tree motif is often captioned with "The Lightning".
Regardless on whether or not it's lightning hitting a tower or tree, either was meant to be interpreted as "punishment from God".
The original card I had for The Tower was quite neutral (a foxy boxy Mettaton skyrocketing upwards and throwing down bombs) and meant to be more of the typical meaning of upheaval associated with The Tower. Opting to have Mettaton Neodymium for The Lightning is more of a callback of the "heaven's anger" theme.
The Devil's Tower as a substitute for The Tower
This one's interesting, there's a few decks where The Tower or The Lightning is a pair card with The Devil, such that their images were less about heaven's righteous lightning fury and more like... a literal portal to hell dragging in lost souls.
The name of this imagery isn't always quite consistent. There's "The Devil's House", "Hellmouth", "[The house of the] Damned" (although ironically the Tarot de Paris lists this as "The Lightning" when it looks nothing like lightning! D:). I went with the "The Devil's Tower" here.
Hopefully you see my inspiration here: Kartarsis's open chest is reminiscent of the portal to hell, he's got his hand on that soul, that soul is doomed.
If you’ve ever had the privilege of calling a trans person by their chosen name for their first time in real life it will genuinely change your life and I’m being so serious.
Had a friend (let’s call her Maddie) who didn’t exactly try to pass, whose parents weren’t supportive, and didn’t really have other irl friends. Claimed to “not care about her name or pronouns, so I should just call her by her ‘real name’ (birth name). And I did. For a long time, I did, because she never told me she used anything else. One day she asked for my insta and I added her, and I noticed her displayname on there was “Maddie”. I asked her about it, and she said it was just a “silly online name”.
Later that day we went to the movies to watch that new Captain America film. I cringed the whole way through, while she waffled on in my ear about “comic-accuracy” (I love her, but she’s a nerd.)
‘Maddie, I’d love to hear this after it’s over but please let me listen to the dialogue.’
She looked like she was about to cry, and I thought I’d made her sad by essentially telling her to shut up, but then she smiled and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much joy come out of a single person from such a simple thing to say.
Later I dragged her to the makeup store and essentially role-played as a straight couple with an apathetic boyfriend so she could pretend not to want to be there while I explained what everything did, dropping the man voice I’d been trying to hold in public for years just to yap about different lipstick shades like a valley girl.
And I went up to the register with her, and she was practically shaking when she handed one stick of eyeliner to the woman behind the register and she commented on how nice it was for “him” to be buying me something.
And we played it off, until we walked out the store and made a dash for the family-bathroom where I did her eyeliner while she cried and giggled and took a million pictures of herself and wiped it off and tried to do it herself over and over until it looked decent and then she hugged me so hard I nearly cracked a rib.
I can’t really explain what that afternoon meant to either of us. She and I drifted apart after a few months because meeting up became really hard, but still I remember that day like it was yesterday. I think I’ll remember it forever.
Spread trans joy. It’s the purest thing in the world.
I am once again spreading the good word of r/transtryouts! It's a subreddit where people request you to use a name and pronouns so they can hear how it sounds/feels. They usually request something personalized based on their interests and such so you can get creative. It's really easy to write affirmations, and you never know what it's going to mean to the person on the other end. 💖🏳️⚧️
your idol from kpop demon hunters but it’s underfell mettaton trying to captivate the audience to give him their souls so he can have enough soul power to leave the underground
it’s less that i like that the fun gang keep dying and more that the knight keeps distracting me by hitting these absolute emo figure skater poses and i keep getting hit
i say this as a person who was an emo figure skater when i was dess’ age. and when i was kris’s age. and when i was frisk’s age. and will be when im carol’s age.
it’s less that i like that the fun gang keep dying and more that the knight keeps distracting me by hitting these absolute emo figure skater poses and i keep getting hit
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